


history will be kind to me for i intend to write it

by areyoumarriedriver



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 21:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/areyoumarriedriver/pseuds/areyoumarriedriver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Written for the River/Doctor ficathon a while ago. Prompt: Imperial Japan. Cherry Blossoms. A silk kimono. Spilt tea.]</p><p>It’s not like they mean to do it, honestly.</p><p>River just has a thing for monuments in history, and having... well special dates on them. The sorts of dates where he makes sure he just wears braces and his overcoat, no waistcoats because – (far too much to take off sweetie) – well just because.</p>
            </blockquote>





	history will be kind to me for i intend to write it

**_history will be kind to me for i intend to write it_ **

i.

It’s not like they _mean_ to do it, honestly.

River just has a _thing_ for monuments in history, and having... well _special dates_ on them. The sorts of dates where he makes sure he just wears braces and his overcoat, no waistcoats because – ( _far too much to take off sweetie_ ) – well just because.

She loves the feel of time around them, history pressing into the skin of her back. It had started at Stonehenge (the second time, not the first. For him that is – it was the first for her) and she’d been so enraptured, so utterly and illicitly pleased that – well. How could he help himself?

River is irresistible at the best of times. It’s not like it was something _new_. His very first date with her in university, she’d been all brash smiles, her body pressing against his. _My turn-ons include intelligence, wit, bowties, history, old things and men who trip over their own limbs._ He’d flushed and wondered where he was supposed to put his hands when her everything was pressed all against him and she’d just laughed and pressed a bright red kiss to his chin. _Oh. And big chins. Big hands too. Big **other things** aren’t so shabby either, sweetie_.

So if their nights tend to include a lot of historical monuments, places and planets – well, that’s coincidence.

Really.

(he keeps a stack of history books by his bed to leaf through on nights when he can’t see her. It’s not like he has a list or anything. And if he does have a list it’s for his eyes only. There is no list though. Well. Not _written down_ at any rate.)

ii.

“Do you smell something burning?”

Her nose wrinkles and he lifts himself off of her, his skin still sticking to hers as he grins down at her. He can’t help it – her nose crinkles and his hearts sort of do this tango in his chest when he sees it. He wants to smooth the skin on her nose, but he also never wants it to go away.  So he presses a kiss to the tip of her nose instead and his own wrinkles as he lifts his head.

He could smell smoke.

“I don’t think –” he pauses and she is already shoving him off of her and scrambling off of the heavy wooden table they’d just done rather unspeakable things on top of. She has ink from several scrolls smudged across her back, and he giggles – he can read her in bed later. “Is that fire?!”

“Where’s the sonic?” River starts digging through the papers on the table, her robe half undone and hanging from her body. He struggles to pull his trousers up as she fumbles with it. “Did we knock any candles over?”

“No. Well yes. Well not a candle precisely but that pole we stumbled into _may_ have had a lantern?”

“Doctor!”

“Yes well, we knew it burned River, it’s a fact of history and really it’s your fault for wrapping your hand around my-”

“ _Doctor_ ,” she stresses and he looks up to see their only exit to the room is blocked by flames, licking underneath the door.

“Right then. Window, my dear?” He holds out a hand and she glares at him.

(she saves as many scrolls as she can, and much later when they are back in the TARDIS, smelling of acrid smoke, she makes him write down what is written against her skin. She checks him over for any snippets of history as well. _The last knowledge of Alexandria_. _It’s priceless you know_. He runs his fingers over the words on her back and presses tiny kisses across her skin. _So are you_.)

iii.

He should make a note for his future self: Dais? Not as structurally sound as they seem.

Definitely don’t have dates on dais'.

Of course, they are in Tōdai-Ji Temple and he doesn’t quite realise that until halfway _through_ the – uh… _date_. So to speak. She’s on his lap (after having him explain in explicit detail the history of the largest wooden structure on earth) bouncing enthusiastically when the support splinters.

The problem with the largest wooden structure, of course, it that it is all made of _wood_. They tumble down in a terrific heap with the offerings of broken tea cups, spilt green tea and flowers scattered on the floor around them.

River has tea on her shoulders and back, he is fairly certain that there is an unfortunate shard of pottery digging into his calf and cherry blossoms have wound their way into her hair. The entire dais is ruined behind them, and they don’t even – can’t even stop. He simply rolls them over until she is lying where his kimono had been discarded earlier, and she clutches his shoulders, breathless with laughter as her legs wrap around his waist and she spurns him on.

(later he tries to fix the mess, but the sonic doesn’t do wood. It _does_ however resonate the enormous bronze Buddha behind the dais until there is a terrific crack as the head separates from the shoulders and crashes down.  Really he’s sure the monks will just assume the head rolling off caused the destruction. _And what caused the head to fall off then sweetie? … Shut up, River.)_

 iv.

“River,” he hisses at her as she laughs, holding his hand and skipping through the winding streets. “This was just a visit, not a – you know, _special night_.”

“Every night with you is special, sweetie. And come _on_. You landed us days before the Spaniards arrive. You _know_ what history in the making does to me, honey,” she stops, turning to push into him as she purrs quietly in his ear. His hand reaches for her hip reflexively. He really does know what it does to her.

He’ll never admit it, but he feels the same rush – the swirl of time around them, so close to a still point. Not _fixed_ (okay sometimes fixed) but still points. Shifting points, where the paradigm turns and history flow one way, instead of another.

“Do you ever want to save them?” she asks conversationally as they pick their way through the empty streets. It is the middle of the night, and no one is around as River walks him to the town square, veering off to the left as they reach it.

He stares at her for a moment – River is… adventures with her aren’t like adventures with his human friends. She is like him, and sometimes the freedom of travelling through history with her is heady, and exhilarating. “Some things have to happen.” He finally answers as she pulls him along – making their way up to the Intihuatana stone. “Hitching post of the sun, River? Really?”

She smirks over her shoulder as she walks up the shallow steps to the flat surface. “Well.  It’s for religious ceremonies. This is a ceremony of a _sort_ ,” she laughs softly as she tugs on his braces and draws him up next to her, kissing him as her hands skim over his body. Her lips are cool against his but her tongue is hotter and he moans into her mouth. “Can’t you feel it?” Her whisper is hot against his skin. “The perfection of the longitude and latitude – right here. The history of everything buried beneath us?”

His hands sink into her hair as he groans.

(the sun rises over them and he marvels at the pinks and yellows and shadows on her skin, underneath a sky that fades from black to purple to violet to pink to yellow to blue. He thinks that here – the sun worships her just as much as he does.)

v.

“Honey, you know I love a tomb!” She is delighted, he knows. Her face is split wide with a grin as she runs her hands over the carved pink stone in front of them. This one was a bit tricky, but a combination of the TARDIS and a perception filter should give them plenty of time and privacy.

He does know she loves a tomb, and this tomb is like no other – carved out of the rock it is built into, the obelisk tomb in Petra is rich with history – already ancient, because he knew doing this while tourist mill about would thrill her all the more.

“Can we go inside?” She beams and doesn’t wait for him, instead escaping the harsh sunlight and entering the cool shadowed room beyond the door.

“I know you love them and all River, but being inside is a _bit_ weird.”

She laughs and the sound echoes around the large room, which looks surprisingly not tomb like at all. “This isn’t the tomb, sweetie. It’s the ceremonial room – they held feasts to honour the dead in here. The tomb is above us,” her voice is soft – it always is in sites like this. Burial grounds or battlefields.  She always seems a touch more sombre, a bit more reverent.

Of course it doesn’t stop her from pressing against him, her hands on his chest as she scatters kisses along his neck, but she goes slower, and it always feels more like a ritual in these sorts of places. He feels like she is stripping him down to his soul, even as she bares her own. Their voices are soft murmurs – a mixture of Gallifreyan and English – against each other’s skin.

It is slow.

It is sacred.

And he thinks he loves the tombs too.

(dust clings to her skin and his afterward as they lay together in the cool interior, a fine film over both of their bodies. Their laboured breaths create little clouds of it, and she smiles up at him in delight. He contemplates the dust, somewhat sombrely. They are all dust in the wind, but she takes his hand and kisses his cheek as she adopts a mischievous expression. _That was sort of a feast, right?_ )

vi.

The moon is rather tricky.

He lands the TARDIS and extends the air shell as far as he can, and he and River giggle madly as they hold hands and leap across the low-gravity surface.

She pouts when she realises how _far_ they are from the landing site, and he just pushes her down behind the lip of a crater and hands her a pair of 52 nd century binoculars.

She holds her breath as they watch Neil Armstrong take that one small step, and she beams at the Doctor while the tiny astronaut in front of them plants a flag as the Doctor rolls his eyes. “ _Humans_ ,” he mutters and she laughs, nudging his shoulder.

“Well, would like to stake your claim, sweetie?”

He glares at her but his hands betray him, pulling her closer, because – well, _yes_. He quite would like to, thanks ever so much.

(the low gravity makes things _interesting_ and he gets distracted by the undulation of her hair fourteen different times, his breath catching and his hips stuttering as he stills simply to watch it sway and bounce slowly. She laughs every time and threatens to straighten it if _you don’t bloody hurry up sweetie_.)

vii.

He always wondered why the lost moon of Poosh was lost in the first place – how does one misplace a _moon_?

River wants to find out, naturally, and it seems like great fun until the Sontaran armies show up and it turns out that the lost moon of Poosh wasn’t _lost_ so much as destroyed. Something about moonites.

Which would have been perfectly fine had River not basically called them all a vast army of cranky old hags in need of their hormones.

So they run through the woods ( _Forests on a moon, River! – Oh shut up sweetie, George Lucas did it first. – You know I met him once-)_ hand in hand, feet pounding into the ground as River laughs about how _short_ Sontarans are. “They’ll never catch up.”

Just then a laser rifle is shot and it singes the tips of her hair, and he almost halts, ready to turn and fight because you don’t _shoot his wife’s hair_ , but River yanks him forward again until they reach the TARDIS and escape in a wheeze of engines and a cacophony of panting breaths.

(she pouts about not having the opportunity to bless the moon, however, and gives him that look that she has so well that he almost instantly relents, sending them back four years in time, long before any Sontarans can be annoyed by River’s taunting. They explore the forest, and then each other.)

viii.

“This is cutting it a bit fine,” he mutters into her hair as they cling to the shadows by the wall and watch as the magistrate searches the rooms in the corridor ahead of them. The House of Lords is quiet and River’s shoulders shake with silent giggles.

“Hush, sweetie, you know they’re about to find him really. And how could I _not_ want to witness this? It’s a huge staging point-”

“You just want to get in the room with 36 barrels of gunpowder, River,” he sighs and she stops talking.

“Well. I mean – honestly, sweetie. It’s delicious.”

“They won’t just leave it unguarded, how exactly are you proposing we get in? And what _for_? It’s just…. gunpowder.” He crosses his arms as the search party finally burst into the correct room, and there is a loud commotion.

“It’s not just gunpowder, it’s an unused weapon. A turning point – a could have been that could have altered all of history around it. Don’t act like you don’t feel it, Doctor. We could have gone out there and prevented them from finding Fawkes – it’s not a fixed point – and all of history would have changed around us. So many infinities possible because of one undischarged weapon.” Her words are hypnotising, and moreover, correct. He can feel the pull and strain on the timelines here, the weight of unlived possibilities thrumming around him.

“You’ve got such a kink, dear,” he murmurs by her ear as he leans over her and she purrs, pushing back against him.

“ _We’ve_ got such a kink Doctor. I know how much time turns you on, sweetie.” He stays quiet as they watch the search party haul Fawkes out of the room, his chest pressing into her back as they both lean forward to observe. “Naturally they leave one man behind. See, sweetie?” River is uncapping a tube of lipstick even as she glances back at him flirtatiously. “Human nature – they all want to watch the chaos unfold. One guard is easy enough to take care of,” she winks at him and he shifts, his hands gripping her hips as he grumbles. “Plus you’re so adorable when you get jealous.”

“It’s not jealousy, River, it’s – it’s – simply the idea that my wife ought not go round snogging other men-”

“Do women not count then?” she asks cheekily and he huffs at her, glaring.

“ _River_ ,” he hisses and she shrugs, reaching up to tweak his bowtie.

“I’d feel worse honey, but quid pro quo and all that, I’ll stop when you stop.”  He sighs at that as she blows him a kiss and moves up the hall, hips swaying as she approaches the guard at the door. He glares as she kisses him, his arms crossing and something awfully like a pout crossing his face.

It’s not as if he kisses other people with romantic intent, he thinks.

And at least he definitely doesn’t make her _watch_.

(gunpowder gets everywhere, smudging across her skin and settling in her hair. The smell of sulphur overwhelms him and he can taste it, acrid on his tongue but she is alight beneath him and for a moment so incandescent he wonders if they may ignite it all.)

ix.

“It’s a _tiny_ alteration!” She exclaims as they glare at each other over the digital scroll spread across the table in front of them. “They’ll hardly notice a thing,” she amends as he drags a hand over his face.

“Yes, River, because the one thing the Shadow Proclamation are known for is their _lack of attention to detail_. I mean, of course! It’s only a few thousand articles long.” He waves his arms as she shrugs.

“I always assumed that you helped write it honey, you do tend to get rather long-winded, you know,” she snaps back, but she is grinning and he is biting back a smile too.

She’d just wanted to see it signed.

Simple enough, really – observe the final interment by the Shadow Architect as he signed it into law and placed the copy in the memory banks of the room they’re currently standing in. Well. At the moment anyway – they hadn’t been _standing_ so much a few moments ago, and he was mid-way through re-buttoning his shirt when he’d noticed her intent to make _edits_. “Stop it – you deliberately distracted me in the hopes I wouldn’t notice River!”

“Oh sweetie, I always deliberately _distract_ you. How can a girl help herself when you’re you and the distracting is just such fun?” She winks at him as she scrolls through. “Besides it’s not as though I’m editing _articles_ , Doctor. It’s just a clause.”

“Clause 374 was put there for a _reason_ River-”

“How did you know which clause?” She looks up, her eyes narrowing as she stares at him and he flushes.

“Well what else would you care about? Honestly. Theft of precious artefacts is a capital offense-”

“Yes, yes, yes, deplorable I know. We shouldn’t steal important things. Bad thieves. However I fail to see how you can condone leaping from _theft_ to murder as punishment and for that matter I suppose the TARDIS would _count_ as an artefact of importance wouldn’t she? Now I _know_ you’ve been tried once or twice…”

He flushes and moves over to her, pulling her away as he mumbles something and she laughs. “Sorry, sweetie, what was that? Couldn’t quite hear you.”

“I said fourteen times, River, now come on,” he finally snaps, exasperated and she laughs, wrapping her arms around his neck as she presses herself against him and brushes her lips against his jaw. His arms wrap around her automatically, his fingers curling into the soft fabric of her dress as he sighs.

“What if I get killed because of clause 374 one day, Doctor? Do you _really_ want that?” She is attempting to guilt him, he knows, and his hearts squeeze tight for a moment, clenched around her memory, secreted away at the center of them.

“You could just not steal things,” he finally jabs back and she sighs gustily, her chest pushing into his as she tilts her head back until her curls brush his hands as she laughs.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“Only one solution then River.” He leans down and presses a soft kiss to the length of her throat as her breath catches and her hands slide from his shoulders and across the expanse of his chest. She is undoing all of the work he’d just finished and he chuckles, licking at her skin as she gasps out a response.

“What’s that then?” Her hands shove his shirt off even as his are slipping under the hem of her skirt again, pulling it up and up and up.

“Don’t get _caught_.”

(it’s unfortunate that they’re discovered just as she is seated on the table, her legs winding around his hips and drawing him in. If asked later, he thinks that trial fifteen is perhaps his favourite of _all_ his trials before the Shadow Proclamation. For no particular reason, of course.)

x.

“So where do you want to go? What do you want to see?” He beams at her, so young, so bright as she stares up at him, biting her lip disbelievingly.

“But we just got back-” she waves behind her to the door. All the stars in all the universe. And also chips.

“Are you tired?” his voice pitches low as he asks and she shakes her head quickly.

“No, it’s just – I thought it would be… sort of you’d take me and then bring me back, sort of thing,” she sounds unsure and he moves closer to her, stroking a finger over her nose.

“Time machine, River Song. What could possibly more worth stealing than time?”

“Anywhere?” she asks, leaning in to him and a smile curls the corner of his mouth up as he watches her eyes light up. His River.

“Anywhen.” He reiterates and she smiles up at him before she glances around as if in thought. Her eyes fall on something, and she walks over to the jump seat, picking up a book from a stack on the floor. A stack that should be by his bed. His ship whirs warmly as he strokes the panel.

“History books, Doctor? I’d have thought you’d rather live it than read it,” she muses as she lets it fall open to a section on the pyramids of Giza, where he’s highlighted a passage about the arms of the Sphinx, and she flushes as she reads his pencilled-in notes. “Oh.”

He watches her, smiling as he begins to key in coordinates.

“Really though – _on the sphinx_?” She giggles. “What’s next? Stonehenge? The Babylon gardens?” He moves over to her after he lands, his body crowding hers and he watches her pupils dilate as she looks up at him, licking her lips.

“If you’d like.  Do you remember our first date River? In university – what you said to me?” his voice is low and her eyes widen as she flushes.

“About history? I was just flirting, I wasn’t serious…” she falters and he smirks down at her.

“Weren’t you? Don’t you want to find out?”

Okay, maybe he _means_ to do it all along.

(she takes his hand and laces her fingers through it. Sandstone is rough against her skin, and sand and dust get _everywhere_ , but her eyes widen as she stares up at the blank face of the statue above her while he presses kisses into her skin and moves above her, whispering polar equations in her ear and telling her if only Fibonacci had seen her hair. She comes undone around him, a cry in the vast desert and he watches her in wonder. She is perfect, and he will write her all across time and space, until there is no space within the galaxy that does not hold her memory. He never wants to forget.

So he won’t.)


End file.
